IT fills a room and took more than a decade to compute what a smartphone processes in a minute.
But this wall of metal and cables, which turns 60 next week, is priceless. CSIRAC is Australia's oldest computer - and the oldest in the world that remains intact. 
Its "birthday" marks a milestone that helped revolutionise computing. Retired professor Peter Thorne, the former head of the University of Melbourne's computer science department, said the CSIRAC was one of the very first "first-generation" computers in the world.
"The advent of the programmable computer was the start of the digital revolution," he said.
"And Australia was at the forefront of the entry into the computer age." Built in Sydney by technicians from what is now the CSIRO, the two-tonne computer was switched on at the University of Melbourne on   June 14, 1956. It could play music, do numerical weather forecasts and calculate loan repayments.CSIRAC, short for Council for Scientific and Industrial Research Automatic Computer, was used until 1964 and is now in the Melbourne Museum.